November 13, 2007

(I never had anybody check the Japanese in this script; if you see a mistake let me know.)英語表現を使うぜSHOW!

きょうの言葉はwayだ繰り返して…じゃきょうの表現はNo way!繰り返して意味はいろいろが含めての意味は：決して～ないとか嘘だ！とかやだとか絶対だめ！とか仕方がないじゃいくつかの例文で行くぜ！A: Billy, take out the garbage.A:ビリ君、塵を捨てて。B: No way! I’m playing video games!B:やだ！テレビゲームしているんだぞ！

A: Won’t you date me?A: デートをしてくれませんかB: No way!B: きもい！

A: Are you going to fail?A: 失敗するかいB: No way! I’ll definitely win!B: 絶対そのことないよ。僕の勝ちだ。----Unrelated: I like this picture.--Also, I am going to try to hook my ipod up to the school announcements and play some golden eggs.

November 7, 2007

I have fungus. And bacteria. In my throat. Ironically, one of my medicines is penicillin (fungus) based.

Japanese drugstores have a funny routine when they give you your medicine. They go, "Oh, your throat is sore, isn't it?" "Yes? Well take these after meals." "Oh, and your chest has an interesting sensation, right?" etc.

Making you want to say, "Just gimme my medicine. And validate my parking."

November 6, 2007

Once again blogging about extentions. I do this for my own benefit too, cause I use many computers between schools and download extensions at all of them.

Extensions:All-in-one gestures (disable all unused guestures) Right click and make a squiggle. I use it to close tabs.greasemonkey You need it for the scripts in the scripts part of this article.rikaichan (with names dictionary, press return to switch) The best tool on the net for reading any Japanese webpage. Or even mine sometimes.submit to tabScribefire Useful when I post for wordpress blogs like Japanprobefoxmarks Syncs my midget porn bookmarks wherever I go.GButts All your google pages next to the URL bar or wherever.Resurrect Pages Useful for dugg-to death pages.tab history New tabs have the history of the page that spawned them.tab mix plus Essential.Context search Lets one search highlighted text with any search engine they have installed into the search bar.

Greasemonkey scripts:google cache continuePagerizationwikipedia auto-logingoogle MP3 Puts a little play button next to MP3 links you can listen with.Textarea backup Essential for not losing stuff you said or want to say again.

So a kid drops his math triangles on the floor. I take them to the board and draw a small house shrine (or maybe it wasn't; I also drew a portrait of some man in a picture frame so I could have been drawing a funeral thing--we'll get to why it's bad that I don't really know) and some incense and a plate of mikans. Then I place the triangles there as if I am making an offering to my ancestors.

The kids thought it was hilarious.

When the teacher finally noticed, she thought it was sacrilegious. She sternly said, "We don't do that," and erased it. Then she turned to the class and said something quickly with the word "joke". I'm not sure if she was covering my actions or denouncing them.

So a couple of factors go into my surprise, and my やっぱり "I shoulda known" feelings about the matter.

Factors that made me think it was okay:The Japanese aren't religious. They often seem pretty proud of how religious they aren't.I was talking to the other teacher before class, and she joked about how if you don't honor your deceased grandma with a snack offering, she will turn into a vengeful ghost. So I had it in my head at the time that one can joke about that very thing.There are many scenes in animes and comedies where I have seen people joking about funerals. Please see this video for what I am talking about with the funeral funnies.The kids seemed to think it was funny.

Factors that should of let me know that things would suddenly take a turn for "I'm sorry I just insulted you and your entire culture":The Japanese are religious, or at least ceremonial in a Confucian way. Even though many of them proclaim no religious beliefs, almost everyone still has those home shrines. All the festivals, save our Saga balloon festival, have religious overtones.Funeral stuff is taboo. My students were shocked when we had a discussion in which I stated that sticking your chopsticks in your bowl and standing them that way is not rude. Shoulda foresaw that related stuff would be bad too.That teacher takes everything I do seriously. For instance, I described a guy as a "the one that is a little chubby" when at a loss for a name, and she heard me across the room and was like, "What did you say?!"A funeral is not the same as a home shrine. Once again, I am too culturally ignorant to know if I depicted a shrine as I intended, but in any case, I don't know some of the taboos going on, so while it may be okay for comedians on TV (afore-posted video link), there are rules to the comedy I might not get.The children are aliens. No, seriously, any middle school teacher in Japan will tell you that. Ask them about the alien thing. What it boils down to is the children may have thought it was okay to laugh because they are not yet indoctrinated.The Japanese are superstitious. Usually only in a "this will bring me good luck" way, but still.